Michael Wigglesworth

Michael Wigglesworth (born October 18, 1631, believed to be Yorkshire , England ; died June 10, 1705 in Malden , Province of Massachusetts Bay ) was a New England theologian, preacher, and poet.

Life

His family emigrated to New England in 1638 because of increasing persecution for their Puritan beliefs. Wigglesworth grew up in New Haven . 1648–51 he studied theology at Harvard and taught there until 1654. Increase Mather was one of his students . In 1653 he became a pastor in the Charlestown Ward; from 1656 until his death he preached in Malden. However, his weak constitution often kept him from the pulpit. In 1663 he took a cure in Bermuda , where he began to work in medicine. As a result, he also practiced as a doctor in Malden.

In 1662 he published the long poem The Day of Doom; or, A Description of the Great and Last Judgment , which became America's first best seller. It is a description of the Last Judgment and, as it were, an exposition of Orthodox Calvinist beliefs. The 1,800 copies of the first edition sold within a year, and by 1751 it had seven American and two English reprints. Along with the Bible and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress , it was the most widely read book in New England. In many strictly Puritan households it was even the only literary work that was even permitted. At least in rural areas, schoolchildren had to memorize The Day of Doom until around the time of American independence. The Day of Doom is notorious for its basic attitude, which appears inhuman from a secular perspective, but which certainly corresponded to the convictions of its puritanical contemporaries. In it, for example, God lets children who have died unbaptized know that he will keep the most pleasant room in hell ready for them.

Wigglesworth's other works include, among other poems of religious content, the Jeremiad God’s Controversy with New England , which was not printed until 1871, as well as the treatise Meat out of the Eater, or Meditations concerning the Necessity, End, and Usefulness of Affliction to God's Children ( 1669). Parts of his diary were also published in the 20th century.

literature

Factory editions

• John Ward Dean (Ed.): The Day of Doom, or, A Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment: With other Poems . American News Company, New York 1867.
• Ronald A. Bosco (Ed.): The Poems of Michael Wigglesworth . University Press of America, Lanham, MD 1989. ISBN 0-8191-7345-2
• Edmund S. Morgan (Ed.): The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth 1653-1657: The Conscience of a Puritan . Harper & Row, New York 1965. Reprint: Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA 1990. ISBN 978-0-8446-0808-2

Secondary literature

Biographies

• Richard Crowder: No Featherbed to Heaven: A Biography of Michael Wigglesworth . Michigan State University Press, East Lansing 1962.
• John Ward Dean: Memoir of Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, Author of The Day of Doom . J. Munsell, Albany, NY, 1871.

Local and church historically oriented representations

• Deloraine Pendre Corey: The History of Malden, Massachusetts, 1633-1785 . Malden 1899. (Special chapter VII-IX)

Secondary literature in literary studies

• Alan Bray: The Curious Case of Michael Wigglesworth . In: Martin Duberman (Ed.): A Queer World , New York University Press 1997. ISBN 0-8147-1875-2 , pp. 205-215
• OM Brack, Jr .: Michael Wigglesworth and the Attribution of I Walk'd and Did a Little Molehill View. In: Seventeenth-Century 28: 3, 1970. pp. 41-44.
• Eva Cherniavsky: Night Pollution and the Floods of Confession in Michael Wigglesworth's Diary . In: Arizona Quarterly 45: 2, 1989. pp. 15-33.
• Richard Crowder: The Day of Doom as Chronomorph. In: Journal of Popular Culture 9: 4, 1976. pp. 948-59.
• Robert Daly: God's Altar: The World and the Flesh in Puritan Poetry . University of California Press, Berkeley 1978.
• Jeffrey A. Hammond: Sinful Self, Saintly Self: The Puritan Experience of Poetry . University of Georgia Press, Athens 1993. ISBN 0-8203-1500-1
• FO Matthiessen : Michael Wigglesworth, a Puritan Artist . In: The New England Quarterly 1: 4, Oct. 1928. pp. 491-504.
• Alan H. Pope: Petrus Ramus and Michael Wigglesworth: The Logic of Poetic Structure. In: Peter White (Ed.): Puritan Poets and Poetics: Seventeenth-Century American Poetry in Theory and Practice , Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 1985. ISBN 0-271-00413-4
• Nicholas F. Radel: A Sodom Within: Historicizing Puritan Homoerotics in the Diary of Michael Wigglesworth . In: Tracy Fessenden, Nicholas F. Radel, Magdalena J. Zaborowska (Eds.): The Puritan Origins of American Sex. Religion, Sexuality and National Identity in American Literature . Routledge, New York 2000. ISBN 0-415-92640-8
• Moses Coit Tyler : History of American Literature during the Colonial Period, 1607-1765 . Single volume: GP Putnam's Sons, New York ca.1879.

Encyclopedia Articles

• Ronald A. Bosco: Michael Wigglesworth . In: Emory Elliott (Ed.): Dictionary of Literary Biography , Volume 24: American Colonial Writers . Princeton University Press 1984.
• Leonard W. Cowie: Wigglesworth, Michael (1631-1705) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2004ff. Online: < http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/71115 > (restricted access)
• Raymond A. Craig: Wigglesworth, Michael . In: American National Biography Online , 2000ff: < http://www.anb.org/articles/01/01-00971.html > (restricted access)
• John Langdon Sibley: Michael Wigglesworth . In: John Langdon Sibley: Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts , Volume I: 1642-1658 . Charles William Sever, Cambridge 1873. pp. 259-286.

Web links

• Selection of his poems (English)
• Publications by and about Michael Wigglesworth in VD 17 . (No entries on February 9, 2018)